Still Building That Defensive Line

Round Three: Bryan Smith, McNeese State, DE / OLB

This is an interesting pick for a couple reasons.  First, the bio:

BIOGRAPHY: Three-year starter named Southland Defensive Player of the Year last season when he was also awarded All-American honors. Finished the year with 60/22.5/10.5 lining up at defensive end. Junior-year totals included 68/21/13.5.

POSITIVES: Explosive college pass-rusher who projects to linebacker at the next level. Plays with excellent balance and body control. Bends off the edge and pursues laterally with speed. Quickly adjusts off the initial block, rarely off his feet, and displays great explosion in all aspects of his game. Possesses tremendous first-step quickness, fast making plays out to the sidelines, and quickly changes direction or immediately alters his angle of attack. Works hard to make plays in every direction.

NEGATIVES: Undersized, can be a liability against the run, and handled by large opponents. Rarely asked to play in space.

ANALYSIS: Smith is a terrific athlete who terrorized college quarterbacks the past two years. He must show the ability to make plays moving in reverse if he.s to be anything other than a situational pass-rusher.

PROJECTION: Undrafted Free Agent

That's a LOT of sacks, but still, even for the Eagles, 231 pounds its smallllll for a defensive end.  This is the kind of pick that makes one wonder how much 3-4 is in the Eagles' future, since he's really a pass-rushing linebacker at this level.

ESPECIALLY because the Eagles just picked up a true 3-4 defensive end type in Laws yesterday.  Hmmm..... 

So is this just another "fastball" to rush the quarterback or could he be used in an evolving 3-4 package or could he even be pushing one of the other young guys at WLB in a couple years?

One things I would bet, this guy probably had some great tape on special teams.

UPDATE:  Smith just called in to PE.com.  He's never played linebacker.  He's a defensive end, he wants to stay at defensive end. 

He also sounded like a nice kid. 

Comments

[JG]

Like your idea of bouncing back and forth between 4-3 and 3-4, I'm a big fan of doing that on Xbox to confuse offenses. Birds definetly have the players to do that with the picks over the past few years with the exception of a big, fat, suck up 2 OL, Ted Washington-esque DT (maybe that's something that can be addressed in the later rounds).

[johnnyshaka]

I think I would've rather seen D. Morgan here...especially when this kid would have easily been available later...much, much later.

[Me]

Maybe, but last year we couldn't figure out why they drafted Kolb when they did and then after the draft we heard from a couple teams that they were going to go get him pretty soon.

[ShouldaTookRickyWilliams]

Where the hell is Derek? When did Spadaro start writing for this blog?

[BrianS]

Hmmm...I thought we were already pretty well-stocked at "Undersized Defensive End."

[Me]

That's why they need more. You have to be able to rotate those guys or else they get worn down / have short careers.

Trent Cole played way too many snaps last year because he was the only guy who could consistently get pressure. That meant he had to pace himself more than we'd like to see.

Imagine Cole able to play at 110% on every snap rather than holding things back. It's like a closer who can throw 98 for one inning rather than keeping it at 94 as a starter.